Skin

I notice that so many post process their images, and the sking looks even. The color on it is even.
what are some good video links to watch on post processing skin?
I'd also like to know how to post process the face in photo shop.
I currently have portrait pro, but I want to learn to manually do it. it's not just using 'blur', but a much more drawn out way... I wish I knew what the tool was called.

There are several techniques. Many people use Frequency Separation (Google it and you'll find many tutorials). Others use degrunging (see here:http://retouchpro.com/​tutorials/?m=show&id=2​13

My preference is dodging and burning. Natalia Taffarel has some awesome tutorials demonstrating dodging and burning: http://digitalphotosho​pretouching.com …ffarel-retouching-gallery

Lynda.com or kelbytraining are to excellent online training sites. Chris Orwig at Lynda.com is my favorite.

Frequency separation is probably the technique is like to learn for the smoothing. Thanks for that. I'll do some research on it now

The tool you are thinking about is likely the healing brush.

It's a nice tool, but it does blend (read blur) the healed area in with the adjacent area. It does an ok job around open patches, but is a bit tougher to use around areas of high contrast.

I use the dodge and burn tools and the clone stamp to do most of my skin retouching. I do a little healing, but only a very tiny bit on small, less important areas.

If you want to learn how to do things manually I would recommend you pick up Katrin Eismans book on restoration and retouching. Probably the best book out on retouching IMO.

Finally I will also leave you with a link to what I consider some of the best free retouching videos out there.
http://carrienyc.com/t​utorials/

Check out some of Sean Armenta's beauty retouching videos. Here's part 1 but you should be able to find the other parts in the related videos section:
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=a3w93f7xKlg

I think he does a great job without overdoing it.

That's why I love this forum. Such wonderful informative people. Thank you all much for the information and resources. I will look into them all as soon as possible.